feudal system

Examples of feudal system in the following topics:

• Society Under the Zhou Dynasty

  • Under the initial period of the Zhou Dynasty (called the Western Zhou period), a number of innovations were made, rulers were legitimized under the Mandate of Heaven, a feudal system developed, and new forms of irrigation allowed the population to expand.
  • A number of important innovations took place during this period: the Zhou moved away from worship of Shangdi, the supreme god under the Shang, in favor of Tian ("heaven"); they legitimized rulers, through the Mandate of Heaven (divine right to rule);  they moved to a feudal system; developed Chinese philosophy; and made new advances in irrigation that allowed more intensive farming and made it possible for the lands of China to sustain larger populations.
  • The feudal system in China was structurally similar to ones that followed, such as pre-imperial Macedon, Europe, and Japan.
  • Under this feudal (fengjian) system, land could be passed down within families, or broken up further and granted to more people.
  • Most importantly, the peasants who farmed the land were controlled by the feudal system.

• Preindustrial Societies: The Birth of Inequality

  • Medieval Europe was a pre-industrial feudal society.
  • Two specific forms of pre-industrial society are hunter-gatherer societies and feudal societies.
  • Broadly speaking, feudalism structured society around relationships based on land ownership.
  • This arrangement (land access in exchange for labor) is sometimes called "manorialism," an organizing principle of rural economy that originated in the villa system of the Late Roman Empire.
  • This painting from feudal time shows how fields surrounded the feudal manor where the noble who owned the farms lived--a good depiction of how society was oriented around the agricultural economy.

• Feudalism

  • It can be broadly defined as a system for structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land, known as a fiefdom or fief, in exchange for service or labour.
  • Feudalism was thus a complex social and economic system defined by inherited ranks, each of which possessed inherent social and economic privileges and obligations.
  • Feudalism in 12th-century England was among the better structured and established systems in Europe at the time.
  • The king was the absolute "owner" of land in the feudal system, and all nobles, knights, and other tenants, termed vassals, merely "held" land from the king, who was thus at the top of the feudal pyramid.
  • In its origin, the feudal grant of land had been seen in terms of a personal bond between lord and vassal, but with time and the transformation of fiefs into hereditary holdings, the nature of the system came to be seen as a form of "politics of land."

• Issues In Property Rights

  • There is a history of just such a property system that is well known in the Anglo-American tradition.
  • It is called "feudalism."
  • But the feudal system had a strong interest in assuring that property holders within that system not weaken feudalism by liberating people or property within their control to the free market.
  • Feudalism depended upon maximum control and concentration.
  • The trend is toward the feudal (Lessig, Free Culture, p 267).

• The Theme System

  • The Byzantine-Arab wars wrought havoc on the Byzantine Dynasty but led to the creation of the highly efficient military theme system.
  • In order to survive and fight back, the Byzantines created a new military system known as the theme system.
  • This was similar to the feudal system in medieval Western Europe, but it differed in one important way: in the Byzantine theme system, the state continued to own the land and simply leased it in exchange for service, whereas in the feudal system ownership of the lands was given over entirely to vassals.
  • This efficiency of the theme system allowed the dynasty to keep hold of the imperial heartland of Asia Minor.
  • As a result, a high level of efficiency was needed to combat the Arabs, achieved in part due to the theme system.

• The Eastern Zhou Period

  • The lords under feudalism gained increasing power, and ultimately the Zhou King You was assassinated, and the capital, Haojing, was sacked in 770 BCE.
  • During this time, power became increasingly decentralized as regional feudal lords began to absorb smaller powers and vie for hegemony.
  • By the end of 5th century BCE, the feudal system was consolidated into seven prominent and powerful states—Han, Wei, Zhao, Yue, Chu, Qi, and Qin—and China entered the Warring States period, when each state vied for complete control.
  • Large-scale works, including the Dujiangyan Irrigation System and the Zhengguo Canal, were completed and increased agricultural production.

• Economic Systems

  • The ideas of "progress," economic development and economic growth came with the development of the commercial world that replaced the feudal society of the medieval world.
  • An economic system consists of a matrix of social institutions (law, political institutions, religion, etc), agents (individuals or actors), organizations (corporations, unions, charitable org, not-for-profit firms, etc) and society.
  • The function of an economic system is to coordinate the activities of agents in the processes of provisioning and allocation.
  • Robert Heilbroner identifies thee basic types of economic systems.
  • However, the economic system is usually classified by the dominant approach.

• The Manor System

  • The manor system was an element of feudal society in the Middle Ages characterized by the legal and economic power of the lord of a manor.
  • Manorialism was an essential element of feudal society and was the organizing principle of rural economy that originated in the villa system of the Late Roman Empire.
  • Thus the system of manorialism became ingrained into medieval societies.
  • Serfs formed the lowest class of feudal society.
  • Illustrate the hierarchy of the manor system by describing the roles of lords, villeins, and serfs

• Traditional Authority

  • Traditional authority is generally associated with monarchies or tribal systems.
  • In such systems, the master, almost exclusively an older father, is designated in accordance with the rules of inheritance.
  • In comparison to patrimonalism, feudalism has one major similarity and several important differences.
  • First, feudalism replaced the paternal relationship of patrimonalism with a contract of allegiance based on knightly militarism.
  • Compare patrimonial government with feudalism within the context of traditional authority

• Class Conflict and Marx

  • For example, in the feudal stage, feudal lords owned the land used to produce agricultural goods, while serfs provided the labor to plant, raise, and harvest crops.
  • When the serfs rose up and overthrew the feudal lords, the feudal stage ended and ushered in a new stage: capitalism.
  • In feudal society, means of production might have included simple tools like a shovel and hoe.
  • In feudal times, feudal lords owned the land and tools used for production.
  • Marx believed that the socialist system established after the proletariat revolution would encourage social relations that would benefit everyone equally, abolish the exploitative capitalist, ending their exclusive ownership of the means of production, and introduce a system of production less vulnerable to cyclical crises.